


Saint Barbara's Demon

by Who Shot AR (akerwis)



Category: Bone Key - Sarah Monette, Lewis (TV)
Genre: 1930s, Alternate Universe - 1930s, Crossover, Don't Have to Know Canon, Exorcisms, Gen, Horror, Lovecraftian, Museums, POV First Person, Painting, Past Tense, Plotty, Pre-Slash, Roman Catholicism, Yuletide 2012, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-27
Updated: 2012-11-27
Packaged: 2017-11-19 15:49:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/574968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akerwis/pseuds/Who%20Shot%20AR
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Kyle Murchison Booth acquires a painting and a friend, and loses one of them before the story ends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Saint Barbara's Demon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pitseleh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pitseleh/gifts).



> This is something of an unlikely crossover, so I'm taking the liberty of providing some background on the two fandoms being smashed together.
> 
>  **The Necromantic Mysteries of Kyle Murchison Booth** (aka _The Bone Key_ ) is a collection of short stories narrated by Kyle Murchison Booth, an archivist who has abysmal luck with running into supernatural phenomena. While Sarah Monette chooses to deliberately obfuscate the time and place in which the stories take place, I have decided to set the Parrington Museum down in Boston circa 1930. The main reason for this is the indulgent desire to give Booth [a Boston Brahmin accent](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwvONJXJUO4). These short stories provide the basis for the world of this fic.
> 
>  **Lewis** is a detective show set in the present time, featuring the crime-solving adventures of Detective Inspector Robbie Lewis and Detective Sergeant James Hathaway. In the show, Hathaway is something of an enigma: he's ambiguously bisexual, ambiguously agnostic, and was kicked out of seminary for (you guessed it) ambiguous reasons. I had to adjust him a fair amount to fit him to Booth's world. For our purposes, Lewis doesn't really exist. (That said, I do like to imagine that in this world, he's a Boston detective originally from upstate New York. He might be for another story, though.)

Why it was that I was entrusted with the painting, I think I shall never know. 

It arrived on the threshold of my office on a brisk, sunny afternoon in May, a parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied loosely with twine like it had come to the Parrington with the day’s letters.  There was no return address, however, only the words _Mr. Kyle Murchison Booth, care of the Samuel Mather Parrington Museum_.  When I enquired with the docent who had carried it to my door, he only shrugged and said, “Postman brought it, sir.”

“See that you ask him about it tomorrow,” I said, more sharply than I’d intended, knowing all the while that if no explanation was forthcoming beneath the brown paper, I was unlikely to receive one.

“Yes, sir,” he answered, and left immediately after, citing mail to be delivered to others within the museum.

It was not an unmanageably large parcel, for which I was grateful; I would have been embarrassed to have to ask for assistance moving this entirely unwanted gift further into the mess of books and papers that comprise my workspace.  I balanced it on my chair (for the chair for visitors was currently holding a large folder of treatises and other secondary sources on the Marshall papers) and examined it for some clue as to its origin.  The handwriting was unrecognizable, a neat but cramped script that one had to lean in to read.  Any clues to its origin must be found within.

When I’d unwrapped it, I found only a painting—well preserved, considering that it had next to no protection from the elements when it traveled by the postal service—and a single note card, on which read the caption _Saint Barbara attending to her ablutions_.  The framed picture bore out this description, so far as I could tell: A woman sat upon a stone in a green valley, underdressed for the occasion in the way that people in paintings sometimes are.  She held her long, unbound hair out with one hand, while the other pulled a comb through her copious tresses.  She took no notice of what appeared to be a gathering storm in one corner of the painting, her attention entirely on the act of brushing out what amounted to at least a yard of hair.  Her face, encircled by the usual saintly halo, had an expression of absolute serenity, her lips slightly parted as though to call to someone just outside the frame.

I stood, staring at the painting, for five minutes, until the clock on the wall chimed the hour four, and I recalled myself.  It was a fine enough effort, certainly, though admittedly visual art is not my specialty; why the painting was posted to me and not to Mr. Laszlo, who heads the appropriate department for such things, I could not guess.  I determined that I should pass the painting on to him in the morning and set about continuing my work on the Marshall papers.

❧

I thought nothing more of St. Barbara and her ablutions for five days after delivering the painting to Mr. Laszlo.  On the morning of the sixth day, I entered my office, for once feeling well-rested, and felt the crunch of glass beneath my shoes.  Frowning down at the floor, I followed the glass shards to their origin: a cracked picture frame, its glass shattered and spread across the hardwood floor.

It had been a serviceably forgettable rendering of boats in the harbor that had hung in the space between the office door and the corner of the room.  In the course of its fall, it had somehow managed to have been torn into several large, ragged pieces, perhaps by the glass.

I fetched a janitor to see to the mess and went to find some coffee while Mr. Hamilton swept up the remains of the picture.  While I sipped at it, Mr. Laszlo approached me.

“Good morning, Mr. Booth.”  His voice was low and gravelly and always gave one the impression that one was wasting his time, even when he was the first to speak.  “Had you wanted the painting for yourself, you might have said.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The painting of St. Barbara,” he answered, looking as though he dearly wanted to roll his eyes.  “I’d have brought it back to you this afternoon.  Taking it really wasn’t necessary.”

“I—I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean.”  Accusations of theft did not sit well with the coffee and the square of toast I’d managed to eat for breakfast.  I found myself hunching my shoulders in a daft attempt at making myself smaller.

“We both know where you hung it.  You don’t need to play coy.”  He shrugged.  “In any case, it doesn’t really fit with the collection.  You’re welcome to it.”

Mr. Laszlo left me before I could formulate a reply that conveyed my confusion as politely as seemed necessary in the face of his irritation.  Left to stew with only my thoughts for company, I drained my cup and returned to my newly swept office.  When I sat down to my morning’s work, I suddenly understood quite why Mr. Laszlo thought me playing coy: there, across from my desk, hung St. Barbara in all her porcelain-skinned glory.

When it comes to haunting, possession, and other phenomena beyond the ken of most men, I am not unskilled.  I do not care for the abilities that have come of my studies of the darker aspects of the world, but they have proven useful on more occasions than I ever expected possible.  A malevolent painting should have proved no difficulty for me.

And yet St. Barbara remained a nuisance that week.  The room was unpleasantly cold when one stood before the painting, as indicated by several coworkers; other objects in the room seemed to go missing when I most needed them; perhaps most frustrating, my attention was drawn constantly away from my work to the slender-limbed figure within the painting.  I was left with a feeling of distinct unease when I finally pulled myself back to the Marshall papers. 

These might seem like easily explained occurrences, and in most cases they are, but I didn’t think they were mere coincidence in this case.  And, based on the events that followed, I still believe that something more than a drafty building and my own absentmindedness can be blamed for the incidents I have described. 

I endeavored on three occasions to rid the painting of whatever malicious spirit held it in thrall.  Each night, I left the Parrington confident that my troubles were over; each morning, I returned to find that nothing had changed.  It swiftly became clear that I would need some assistance.

❧

I rapped lightly on his door, on which hung a small nameplate reading _James A. Hathaway_.  After a moment or two of silence, a muffled voice answered, “Come in.”

Opening the door just wide enough to slip through, I tried to find my voice; it was thin and wheedling when it finally did come out, the last remnants of a cold still clinging to it.  “I was wondering if I might borrow a b-bit of your time, Father Hathaway?”

“ _Mister_ Hathaway,” he corrected, not once looking up from a stack of papers on his desk.  His work area was neatly arrayed overall, though a quick glance made clear that the books stuffed into the shelves behind his desk were not alphabetized.  “They take away the title when you’re defrocked.”

“Oh!”  My face heated, no doubt noticeably, as I am most charitably compared to the underside of a fish under favorable circumstances.  “I—I’m s-sorry, sir, I w-was under the impression—“

“It’s fine.”  He glanced at me then, over the top of his wire-rimmed spectacles, with eyes the blue of a clear winter’s day: a bright, pale color with just the hint of green to them.  “You’re not the first, nor will you be the last.  Please, sit.”

I took a seat in the hard wooden chair he gestured to, allowing myself to clasp my hands together, if not to wring them.  “Mr. Hathaway, I’m t-to understand that you are our new expert on, er, C-Catholicism.”

“I am.”  As he spoke, he shifted the papers about on his desk, setting away the document he’d been examining and brought out a small stenographer’s pad.  “Christianity in general, but I do favor the papal interpretation of scripture.  Do you need some part of the catechism explained?”

“Oh—heavens, no.  I’m not Catholic,” I told him.  The Murchison and Booth lines were both staunchly Protestant, though I personally do not ascribe to any religion in particular.  Two things occurred to me after I spoke: first, that perhaps he had thought me interested for intellectual rather than spiritual purposes and second, that I had just sounded aghast at the idea of belonging to a religion to which he had devoted his life until very recently.  Hoping to assuage any insult I’d inadvertently caused, I added, “I apologize, s-sir.  I s-simply mean t-that it isn’t a m-matter of—of faith.”

Mr. Hathaway waved a hand dismissively, perhaps to indicate that all was forgiven, and I found myself painfully aware of the way my stammer betrayed my guilt.  Patiently, he answered, “I’m afraid I cannot guess why it is you’re here, then.  Do you mind if I smoke?”

“Smoke?  Oh—oh, that’s fine.”  I watched with some fascination as he held the cigarette between his thin, pale lips and struck a match.  The scent of tobacco smoke filled the room, not unpleasantly; when Mr. Hathaway exhaled, the smoke trailed up in a thin, pale curl.  “I’m afraid I require rather more _involved_ help.”

“Oh, dear.”  The cigarette clasped between two long fingers of one hand, he picked up a fountain pen with the other.  “I’m no longer allowed to hear confession, you know.”

I felt abominably silly saying, “No—no,” and worse yet asking, “H-have you been told about the Parrington’s p-particular _reputation_?”

“Some things.”  Mr. Hathaway’s brow furrowed slightly.  “I’m afraid you’ll have to clarify which reputation you mean.”

“For—for _spirits_ and—and things.”  I reminded myself that Mr. Hathaway was, presumably, a believer in transubstantiation and could hardly throw stones at references to ghosts.

“Ah.  Yes, I had heard a bit about those.”

“And—do you believe the tales?”  If he did not, this visit would be made all the more difficult.

“’There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’” he quoted, tapping his cigarette against a glass ashtray.  “I can’t deny that I’ve heard some odd noises in the two months I’ve been here.  I’m willing to keep an open mind.”

I nodded, inwardly relieved that I would not have to fight the battle of convincing a man of the existence of the supernatural.  That would require more endurance than that with which I’d come.  “T-then I hope you will not throw me out of your office if I say that I need you to—to p-perform an exorcism.”

Mr. Hathaway’s brow rose.  He was a blond man, with hair so pale it nearly matched the white of my own, and his eyebrows were nearly non-existent, but the skin of his forehead wrinkled with the effort.  For a moment, he did not speak, only gave me a piercing look that suggested he might be trying to decide whether I was telling him the truth.  Then he jotted something down on his pad of paper, in a hand I could not read upside-down.  “I will not.  I’m afraid that I will, however, need to ask politely that you leave for the moment; I’ve a deadline of noon for this.”  He gestured towards the stack of papers he’d set aside when I’d arrived.  “I take tea at half four.  If you come back then, I’ll have time to hear the whole story.”

“Oh—yes, of c-course.”  My cheeks flushed pink again; I had not thought about Mr. Hathaway’s own work and the possibility that I was interrupting it.  “I’ll s-see you then.”

Mr. Hathaway stood when I did, and I was surprised to discover that we were precisely the same height.  He reached for my hand to shake, and we stood at loggerheads for half a minute, until he dropped his hand again.  “I look forward to it.”

❧

I returned at the designated time to find Mr. Hathaway with a china tea service that had seen better days; the cup set before him was chipped, and the teapot was stained brown around the spout.  It seemed functional enough, however, and I am not one to comment unnecessarily on others’ deficiencies.

“I hope you don’t mind Earl Grey,” he said by way of greeting, hardly looking past the bit of lemon he was squeezing into his cup.  It was quickly becoming apparent that James Hathaway did not interrupt his work, whatever it was at the moment, for mere pleasantries.  “As I was making it, I realized I hadn’t asked—but I also realized that it’s the only tea I’ve got, so asking wouldn’t have helped much.”

“Oh—oh, n-no, it’s fine.”  I folded myself back into the chair across from his, where the cup and saucer before me were as pristine as could be hoped.  I suspect that they were usually Mr. Hathaway’s, now extended to me as guest.  “I l-like all kinds of tea.”

“Good.  I was worried it’d be appallingly British of me to serve it.”  Once he’d poured some tea into his waiting cup, he gave me something of an owlish look, his small eyes magnified slightly by the glasses before them.  “Do you take lemon or sugar, Mr. Booth?”

“Both, p-please.”  Jests are not in my usual repertoire, but a thought occurred to me that I found myself sharing before I could think better of it.  “I-I think that taking tea in the afternoon may already be—that is to say—“

“Appallingly British?” Mr. Hathaway finished for me.  The barest shadow of a smile passed over his face; his mouth was impressively expressive, such that the slightest movement of his lips gave his expression an entirely new feeling.  “Old habits die hard, I’m afraid.  I suppose I’ve little hope of blending in as an American with this accent anyway.  Of course—” and as he continued, he saw to my cup of tea—“there is one accent that doesn’t seem so far removed from those of home.  You have a bit of it, if you’ll forgive my saying so, Mr. Booth.”

“B-Boston B-B-Brahmin,” I stammered out, then fell silent, hating the way I tripped over the words nearly as much as the pang of mortification I felt at having been singled out.

“That one, yes.  It’s very pleasant to listen to.”  He set my cup and saucer before me once more, now filled with a thin brown liquid with a single wavering line of steam rising from it.  I was reminded of the cigarette smoke that had escaped Mr. Hathaway’s lips earlier that day, though the accompanying scent was far more agreeable than that of tobacco.

“T-thank you.”  In hopes of deflecting further discussion of the way I spoke—it was a mere hop from my accent to my stammer—I picked up my cup and took a sip of tea.  “T-this is very, er, very nice.”

“Thank you.  I think so, too.”  He took a sip from his own cup, then set it down in favor of the stenographer’s pad I’d seen that morning.  “Now, to business.  Why is it that you require an exorcism?”

I steepled my fingers in my lap, staring down at my fingernails.  There was no way to explain it that did not sound harebrained to me.  But Mr. Hathaway seemed quite serious about the possibility of exorcism, and he had shown me only kindness so far.  So I said, “It’s a painting.  One of St. B-Barbara.  I have reason to believe that, er, that it’s possessed.”

As he scribbled down a note, Mr. Hathaway nodded.  “The virgin martyr, I assume.”

“Er—I believe so?”  It had not occurred to me that there might be more than one saint by the name.

“Is she pictured with a tower?  Some lightning, perhaps?”

“Oh!  Yes.”  The image of the painting, with its beautiful woman combing out her long, golden-brown hair, surfaced in the forefront of my mind: When one looked beyond the entrancing, half-lidded expression on her face, one noticed that a bolt of lightning cut through the sky behind her. 

“The virgin martyr, then.  And you say that the painting is possessed?”  At my nod, he _hmm_ ed and looked down at his pad of paper.  “How so?”

“M-moving without assistance.  The room is colder in front of it.  The, er, the usual signs of possession.”

Mr. Hathaway gave me a curious look.  “Are you well familiar with possessions, Mr. Booth?”

That was a question I would have preferred not to be asked, but as it was, I could hardly lie to him.  “I am.”

“Ah.  The word ‘round the office was, in this case, correct.”  There was the hint of a smile again, held more in the way his eyes softened than in the curve of his lips.  “Mr. Kyle Booth—“

“Kyle Murchison Booth,” I corrected him, before I could restrain myself.

“My apologies.  Mr. Kyle Murchison Booth, who communes with all manner of devils.”  As he spoke, I looked down at my tea, my insides crawling with misery; was I really spoken of in such a manner?  What else had Mr. Hathaway heard, or failed to hear, about me before I ventured to his door?  Perhaps he sensed my discomfort, for his voice softened just as his expression had.  “Believe me, Mr. Booth; I put little stock in gossip.  If you’ll forgive my asking, however, is there a reason you need my help?”

My cheeks burned.  I could not know whether Mr. Hathaway was aware of my other experiences with objects that required a more specialized touch than that of a mere archivist, and it did not matter.  He had guessed, no doubt with ample evidence from coworkers, that my studies of necromancy and other such arts were not always limited to the theoretical.  “I—I’ve tried everything I c-could think of.  A-and she is a f-figure of some importance in your, er, religion—“

“And so you come to me.”  He spoke as though resisting the urge to sigh heavily.  I found myself wondering if, behind those steel spectacles and sharp eyes was a man who did not want to be known only as a priest (former or otherwise) any more than I wanted to be known as one who _communes with all manner of devils_.  “By rights, Mr. Booth, I should ring the Vatican at once and inform them that I’ve a miracle on my hands.”

I nearly spilled my tea, the cup rattling noisily against the saucer, as I looked up at him.  This was not a solution I had considered, but it certainly would be the end of my problems, should the painting allow itself to be shipped away to Rome.  “Y-you’re welcome to, if you think that w-would be wise.”

“The problem with that idea is twofold, unfortunately.”  He took a sip of his own tea, his hands moving smoothly between fountain pen and teacup.  “One: I am not thought of with particularly fond regard back in Oxford, which might call my story into question. And _two_ , perhaps more importantly: ‘Miracle’ sounds like too positive a word to describe what is happening here.”

I nodded dumbly.

“I _am_ willing to do what I can for you, Mr. Booth, but I can’t promise much.  Anything, really.”  His gaze dropped once more to the paper on which he had taken all manner of illegible notes.  “I’ve never performed an exorcism, nor will I be able to get permission from the Church to try. I’m familiar with the ideas behind exorcism, but I was not trained for this.  If you know any priests, they will be better equipped to help you.”

“I don’t,” I confessed.

“Perhaps we should keep this within the Parrington,” he said, and I nodded again, relieved that I did not have to explain how unlikely it was I would to prove sufficiently charming to other potential exorcists.  “But be aware that I can’t promise you much.”

“Of course.”

“Perhaps we should also keep this between the pair of us.  Are most people out of the museum by eight o’clock?”  At my nod (I was beginning to feel like a marionette on a string), he nodded in return.  “Tomorrow, then, unless you’ve other plans.  No?  Well—with that settled, perhaps we can talk of lighter things.”

“Ah, yes,” I agreed.  Though I’d expected to be summarily dismissed when we finished discussing the painting, I still had half my tea left to drink; it couldn’t hurt, I thought, to stay a little longer.  Glancing around his office for something to inspire a change of subject, I espied a small photograph in a silver frame.  “I-is that you, Mr. Hathaway?”

He turned his head to look at the photograph, squinting at it as though he’d never seen it before.  Trapped in a sepia afternoon, a boy of fifteen or sixteen stood proudly upon the pier of a lake, wearing one of the old-fashioned bathing suits that had been common over a decade past.  Around his neck hung a medal on a wide ribbon.  I knew the answer to my inquiry before he spoke: the resemblance was uncanny in the sharp angles of the face and the long chin, hardly softened by his youth.

“Yes,” Mr. Hathaway said quietly, after nearly a minute of looking at that fair-haired boy who lived upon his wall.  He took a sip of his tea.  “Once, a long time ago.”

❧

We met, as agreed, in my office at eight o’clock the next evening.  In my fancies that day, when I was not transfixed by the sight of St. Barbara sitting on her stone, I had tried to picture him in a priest’s cassock; every image my mind had created had seemed laughable.  Thankfully, he arrived in a suit, a small black bag the only indication that he had business beyond cataloguing the museum’s spiritual holdings. 

He greeted me, shut the door, and walked over to my desk, where he laid out the items he carried in the bag.  A crucifix, a rosary, a Bible, several candles, and a vial of what I could only assume held holy water.  For a man without experience in matters of demonic possession, he moved with an enviable self-assurance.

“Do you believe in God, Mr. Booth?” asked Mr. Hathaway as he arranged his tools.

It seemed in poor taste to lie at this juncture, and so I stumbled through an answer that gave as much truth as seemed appropriate to me.  “N-not _strictly_ , no.”

“Then I would ask you to take a seat.”  He gestured to the chair behind my desk; I could not have moved further from the painting if I’d tried.  “We’re already sending one man of questionable faith to the front line, as it were, and I’m told that exorcisms rely upon faithfulness to work.”

I did not answer him, preferring to think on his comment as he set the stout little candles around the room.  It had not occurred to me that Mr. Hathaway’s own faith might be in question; he did, after all, oversee the Parrington’s Christian interests, and I had assumed an unwavering conviction in his doctrine was one of the requirements of the job.  For all the pomp of his movements, however, no doubt held over from the innumerable mystical rites employed by the Church, he spoke as though he did not believe anything he did.

It began to seem less and less likely that we would banish St. Barbara’s demon that night.

When all of the candles were lit, he paused before the painting, staring at it as I had so many times in the past week; his cheeks grew faintly roseate as he looked at the womanly figure in her pastoral setting.  After a moment or two, he cleared his throat.  “This—it’s a rather _unusual_ painting.”

“Is it?” I asked, looking at it with renewed interest.  My interest in iconography is near nonexistent; I had not realized it was notable.

“One doesn’t normally depict certain saints in such—“ he cleared his throat again—“undress.  Particularly not those famous for their virginity.”

“Ah.”  His blush was more understandable with that in mind.

Mr. Hathaway stood looking at it a moment or two longer before flicking the light switch down, throwing the room into darkness, save for the small, flickering lights of the candles he’d lit around the painting.  He turned to look at me once more, his strong features casting much of his face in shadows that quivered over his skin.  “I must ask you to remain silent.”

At my nod, he turned back to the painting and crossed himself, murmuring in low tones, “ _In nómine Patris, et Fílii, et Spiritus Sancti._ ”

My Latin is strong enough that I could follow along with his prayers and invocations fairly easily.  He asked Mary, the mother of God, to protect us and to cast out the creature besmirching the image of a saint; St. Barbara to see her painting and expel the devil within it; Christ the Lord to send the itinerant demon back to its rightful dwelling-place.

The scene that unfolded before me was not the stuff of pulp magazines; I saw no lurid fiends appear to defend Satan against a man who was once of the cloth.  There was only James Hathaway, kneeling before the painting with his rosary gripped tightly in one hand and the words of ancient rituals upon his lips, his pale hair nearly glowing in the candlelight.  It lasted forty-five minutes, perhaps an hour, and though I had no part but that of an innocent bystander, I stared, transfixed, and did not fidget or speak.

After an eternity of listening to Mr. Hathaway’s Latin and watching him finger first one bead of his rosary and then another, the temperature of the room dropped precipitously.  Mr. Hathaway must have noticed as well; he moved as though in a trance, taking his feet in a single, fluid motion and reaching behind him for the vial of holy water.  His hand did not fumble, nor did he glance away from the painting, as he picked up the tiny glass tube and uncapped it.  With a wordless shout, he dashed the water against St. Barbara’s lovely face.

A merciless crack sounded; I threw my arms up before my face instinctually and felt something small hit them, not quite hard enough to bruise.  When I drew my arms down again, the room was dark and silent as midnight.

“M-Mr. Hathaway?” I called quietly, forgetting my promise to be still in the face of the fact that I could no longer hear that quiet, insistent Latin of his.  “M-M-Mr. Hathaway?”

He groaned from somewhere on the floor, and I heard the sort of scrabbling noise of a man trying to stand despite feeling too heavy in his own body.  His voice wavered as he spoke.  “If you would be so kind as to turn on the light, Mr. Booth.”

“O-of course.  Stay where you are.”  I have a desk lamp for particularly late nights; flicking it on illuminated a mess I did not look forward to cleaning up.  My papers were all muddled together, many having come out of their carefully stacked piles, and slivers of wood littered the floor.  And there, in the scant space between the desk and the door, lay a pale, crumpled figure, dressed in a fine black suit.  “Oh—Mr. Hathaway—!”

“I’ll be all right,” he mumbled as I hurried over and kneeled beside him, dabbing with my handkerchief at the blood streaming down his cheek from a jagged cut.  He clasped a shaking hand over mine, drawing it back from his face.  I started, going quite still—I do so detest being touched—until he let go and reached for his own cloth.  “It’s nothing much.  I don’t think you’ll have problems with your painting after this.”

“No,” I said, looking around at the remnants of the shattered frame.  It had exploded, for all I could tell, leaving pieces flung across the room.  Some shards must have hit my forearms as I cowered.  “I—I’m not sure I’ll have a painting at all.”

“I’m not, either.”  His mouth was a thinner line than usual, but he made an effort to turn up the corners nonetheless.  “If you’ll help me out to a taxi, I can make my way home.”

“A-are you sure?” I asked him, frowning down at the blood still seeping from his face. 

“Quite.  I need a shoulder to lean on, not a nursemaid.” 

It was the least I could offer after the trouble he’d gone through on my account, I supposed, and so I tried to swallow my wince as I put an arm around him.  He was easily gotten up and walked out the front door, and as we waited for a cab, he spoke again.

“I take tea at four-thirty most days,” he informed me, looking off towards the buildings across the road.  Night was fallen hours ago, and the only light came from the streetlamps casting their bright orange glows onto dull brick walls and cobblestones.

“Ah,” I replied, uncertain what sort of response he expected of me.

“You’re welcome to join me when you have a chance.”  A taxi pulled up then, and I did not have to come up with more than a stammered agreement that perhaps I would someday.

I had played no active part in the night’s undertaking, but I felt myself nearly as exhausted as poor Mr. Hathaway speeding away in his taxi cab.  Though I had thought to stay later, once we’d taken care of the problem, I found myself wanting nothing but to collect my things and go home to attempt some sleep.  I walked with heavy legs back to my office and slipped into my overcoat. 

Before I turned the light off, I happened to glance down at the tattered canvas, which had fallen to the floor at the culmination of the exorcism.  St. Barbara still sat in her verdant field, but her face was nothing but a blur of melted paint, a splinter of her erstwhile frame sticking out of her chest.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Sarah, my beta, who helped me along with word flow and mentions of tea.


End file.
